Couldn't have happened to two nicer companies _________________A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.

Of course Exxon would also need to assume any debt carried by an acquisition target. But that wouldn’t be a problem — compared with the averaged overleveraged oil company, Exxon has modest gearing with $38 billion in debt outstanding.

Other than Royal Dutch Shell ’s $52 billion takeover of BG Group , we haven’t seen a landmark merger during this downturn. The last time things got this bad for the industry, back in 1998, BP bought Amoco for $48 billion and Exxon bought Mobil for $75 billion.

Who it will be we will find out in due course. BP looks vulnerable though.
However a mega merger is by no means a guarantee that future performance will live up to the hype. In fact it often disappoints.

Bottom line: if you believe in Peak Oil this is just one (albeit a highly significant one) of the signals that we have hit TLTG. Therefore, if this is correct, then we should see this translated into a slowdown in corporate earnings and stagnant/declining profits. That is why I started this thread.

Oh, by the way, the size of the collapse in the oil market? $100 Trillion _________________A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.

Stop for a minute. Let that sink in. The total value of all the world’s oil reserves is over $100 trillion less than it was just a year and a half ago.

Which is irrelevant. The value will go up again with the price. What does matter is any insolvency related to borrowing against reserves. However, it is quite possible that people will hang on for the prices to come back up again at least to some extent.

A second factor that needs to be taken into account is technological change which has the ability of automating a lot more jobs (including all the taxi drivers).
In the end a corporation that owns the robots can make a lot of profit.

Which is why the corporations need to be nationalised so that we all benefit from the robots and can spend more time listening to jazz quartets.

Peak Oil is a scientific fact. That there will at some stage be a maximum production. We had that for conventional crude oil in the last decade.

What is unclear is when this will happen with unconventional sources.

A second factor that needs to be taken into account is technological change which has the ability of automating a lot more jobs (including all the taxi drivers).

In the end a corporation that owns the robots can make a lot of profit.

A strawman argument here John that completely takes out of context my original post.

Whilst what you are saying is true, you are not answering the correct question here which makes your point irrelevant.

What this thread is all about is that at some point all this offshoring and technological advances will be subject to diminishing returns.
A tell-tale sign of this was the vast buy-backs that many large corporations have undertaken recently - as a result of QE policy. This is a major red flag that you ignored. If all this technological wizardry could improve the bottom line significantly than we would have seen this cash go into R & D. We did not. Therefore it is highly probable that we have reached a major inflection point._________________A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.

The value will go up again with the price. What does matter is any insolvency related to borrowing against reserves. However, it is quite possible that people will hang on for the prices to come back up again at least to some extent.

There is a major oversupply of oil in the market in case you hadn't noticed John. Short of a major black swan event the oil price is highly likely to be trading at the current trading range for some considerable time.

This could be construed as oil - along with most other commodities, beginning to find their true price discovery as the markets have not been distorted by the effects of QE. (the gold and silver markets would certainly NOT fall into this category though)

The only way we would see a recovery in the oil market in the long term would be a resumption of QE. Again, however, this would be subject to diminishing returns. Last time the oil price reached a zenith that was just shy of $110 (depends on which oil index used) In 2008 it was $147. Can you spot the trendline here? It is heading southwards - along the lines of what the likes of Heinberg was saying around ten years ago.
If QE is resumed it is probable that the next oil price peak could be around $80 - $90 a barrel mark. Therefore there will still be highly significant losses overall_________________A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.